Pulse OF THE City

South Dallas Sends a Message



Will the Dallas business community get it?



POLITICAL OBSERVERS ARE CALLING Se-Gwen Tyler’s resounding runoff victory over Richard Evans in the special Dallas school board election a sign of seismic shifts in local African-American politics. They say the win reflects:

further dilution of the power wielded by County Commissioner John Wiley Price and prominent black preachers such as the Rev. Zan Holmes;

a repudiation of confrontational, race-based politics within the black community, which began with school board member Ron Price’s narrow victory over firebrand Kathlyn Gilliam;

the realization among black office-seekers that the Hispanic vote increasingly will be a key to victory, a fact that Ron Price also first exploited;

and a painful lesson to some members of the Dallas business community, who seem slow to catch on that it’s no longer business as usual when it comes to the African-American political structure in Dallas.

In fact, some business leaders were so angered when they learned the Dallas Citizens Council had embraced Evans, John Wiley Price’s candidate, that in the late stages of the runoff campaign they poured several thousand dollars into Tyler’s coffers, a huge boost to her first-time election effort.

Evans also hurt himself with slighting references to race and sex-he called school board member Roxann Staff “that white woman “in one public forum. Staff, who is personally acquainted with Tyler, worked hard for the winner’s candidacy. She and her husband. Randy, donated $ 1,000 to Tyler and made her a personal loan of $2,400 more. The Staffs’ bank, American Bank NA, also made Tyler a business loan of $6,000.

Tyler’s handlers say the crucial factor in winning her runoff was to reach out to her district’s Anglo and Hispanic voters, whom Evans ignored. Tyler campaign consultant Teddy Hawkins reports that in precinct 4126, which is mostly Anglo and Hispanic, Tyler polled 121 votes in the runoff to Evans’ 10. In predominantly Hispanic precinct 4132, Tyler outpolled Evans 46-2.

“Se-Gwen was better organized and better diversified,” says Hawkins. “And John Wiley doesn’t have a hold on the African-American community like he thinks he does.”

The question is: How many election snafus will it take for the easily intimidated Dallas business community to learn that?

Backing the Party, Not the President



Local Democrats balk at subsidizing Clintons legal tab.



DALLAS DEMOCRATS HAPPILY OPENED their wallets in June to dine and schmooze under a tent with President Clinton at art collector Ray Nasher’s palatial North Dallas home. But when it comes to helping out with the First Couple’s bur geoning legal bills, the local response has been notably cooler.

Seventy diners anted up about $1 million at the National Democractic Committee fund-raiser. According to contribution lists released by the Clinton Legal Expense Trust, between February and June of this year 44 Dallas residents have donated a considerably more modest $5,460 to defray the Clintons’ legal bills. The largest local contribution was $1,000. The smallest was $4.

Nationwide. 17,000 peopie have donated $2.2 million to the defense trust.

MediaBites

? Early editions of the Aug. 6 Morning News neglected to report what arguably was among the biggest local stories of the day. Testifying in the federal fraud prosecution of contractor William Morris Risby, former DISD roofing inspector James Hargrave told jurors that Risby had admitted to paying kickbacks to former schools CFO Matthew Harden Jr. and others.

“It was a real screw-up,” says one source of the News’ failure to have a reporter present to hear Risby’s testimony. “They had to get [Channel 8 reporter] Brett Shipp to share some information.”

The paper did manage to cobble together a piece bylined “staff and wire reports” for late editions.

The real reason Channel 8 personality Paula McClure resigned from Good Morning Texas! Her new husband, retired General Hugh Robinson, sits on the board of Belo Corp., which has a policy that board members cannot be married to employees of Belo properties, including Channel 8. Somebody had to resign-and it wasn’t going to be him.

Getting fired from Channel 5, says former news director Dave Overton, was “probably the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time,” Sacked at the end of June, when NBC bought the affiliate, Overton has decided to stay in the Dallas area as a media consultant. He’d spent seven years at the helm of the station’s news operations, and 17 with the company. But he doesn’t miss it. “I’m having a good time,” Overton says, “for the first time in a long time.” Guess it was time to go.

Television reporter Midge Hill’s suit charging libel and age-and sex-discrimination against KTVT-Channel 11 is stalled on one point: Where should the lawsuit be heard? Hill’s attorney. Rod Tanner, filed the suit in Dallas, but Channel 11 and its owner, Gaylord Broadcasting, want the case adjudicated in Fort Worth, where the station is located.

Insiders suggest the station wants the change of venue because of KTVT attorney Dee Kelley ’s clout around the Tarrant County courthouse.

One irony in Channel 11 ’s pleading: KTVT routinely downplays its Cowtown connection, leading viewers to believe the station is actually located in Dallas.

? From Our Self-Evident Truths Desk: “Just as I cannot be expected to represent the views of all bald-headed, middle- aged, overweight white men, one woman cannot represent whether something will be viewed as sexist by all other women.”-Jim Witt, executive editor of the Star-Telegram, apologizing for a con troversial company video that a female staff member had approved.

? A.H. Belo Corp.’s Texas cable news channel, scheduled to launch in January, will be patterned after the company’s Seattle-based NorthWest Cable News, but with a twist. While the Pacific Northwest network is composed solely of four television stations, the Texas network will add the vast resouces of the company’s flagship Morning News to its TV holdings in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.

The Internet Open Records Project recorded 12,000 hits only two days after posting the DISD’s financial data on the Internet, The greatest number of hits- 1,500-came from computers inside the district. About 300 came from inside the Morning News, and 100 came from users at Texas Instruments. Some district employees, however, will be troubled to learn that another 100 inquiries came from law enforcement, working behind a “firewall” designed to keep hackers out.

PaperCity, the Houston broadsheet that hit Dallas streets last month, promises “No Politics. No Criticism. Just Fun.” Publisher Jim Kastleman says his motto is “If we can’t say something nice, don’t say it.” Does that sound fun? We prefer Alice Longworth’s famous dictum, “If you can’t say anything good about someone, sit right here by me.”

YESTERDAY

Grinch Day at the Fair

Politics vs. Profits.

IN THE FALL OF 1951, IN AN EFFORT TO divert attention from a grand jury investigation into Tarrant County gam-bling, State Representative Doyle Willis of Fort Worth admonished local reporters to go to the State Fair in Dallas if they wanted to witness firsthand a real den of iniquity. “There are more gambling devices per square foot (at the fair) than there are in Reno, Nevada,” Willis charged.

Dallas City Manager Charles Ford wasted no time in springing to duty. On Oct. 18, Ford and fellow officials stormed down the midway pointing out illegal gambling operations as Police Inspector Charles Batchelor tried frantically to keep track on a note pad.

Ford’s legal standard was reminiscent of Robert Preston’s warning on the evils of pool in The Music Man-any game thai offers a prize is gambling, and all gambling is against the law. As a result, two solid blocks of gaming booths were shut tight, leaving only the African Dip, a game of “skill” in which rowdy rednecks threw baseballs at a lever target in an effort to dunk a taunting black youth perched over a tank of water.

State Fair, Chamber of Commerce, and other officials were livid over Ford’s effrontery and threatened to put the quietus to church bingo, PTA raffles, and children playing marbles for”keepsies.,, The timing was critical because the next day was High School Day, one of the biggest moneymakers of the season on the midway.

After consulting with District Attorney Henry Wade, city officials announced that games of skill, such as throwing baseballs at a three-high stack of wooden milk bottles, were not sinful after all. Games of science, such as trying to figure out how to make pitched nickels land and stick on little glass plates, would also be permitted.

Thus, about half the midway games were reprieved. Before High School Day ended that evening, all of the other games had been modified to meet the skill or science standard except one. Only bingo remained taboo, even though the midway operator had changed the name of the game to “Skillo.”

Sacred Ground

Reclaiming the past.

Dallas’ Freedman’s Cemetery at last is reborn this month as Freedman’s Memorial Park.

The 130-year-old all-black graveyard had been nearly buried itself by years of neglect and encroaching urban development, a process that reduced the cemetery to little more than a memory among descendants of those interred there.

The site was partially bull dozed on a num ber of occasions over the decades, but it wasn’t until the Central Expressway expansion project threatened more than 1,000 African-Americans’ graves that a serious effort began to rescue what was left of the past.

Now. the imperiled remains have been moved. The 1.2-acre park, with a memorial designed by Detroit-born sculptor David Newton, will be dedicated October 16.

“We hope this will be a springboard for the enhancement of relations between Dallas’ diverse communities,” says Brooks Fitch, chairman of the $2 million Freedman’s project. “’In the past there has been a history of communities fighting against each other, but this has become a city of communities coming together to work on this project.”

Newton’s sculptures, a stone archway and five larger-than-life bronze figures, depict men and women as warriors, griots, and guardians in contemplative poses. “I wanted a narrative work showing that all African slaves suffered in the same way,” the artist says.

WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO UNPLUG THE MORNING NEWS PUN MACHINE?

How about money?

STUDY

HAUL

SIGHT FOR SOAR EYES

DARK! Who bowls there?

Playing all the dangles

Wee the people

The calumny continues. No matter what we’ve tried-vituperation, shame, even a plea for common decency-the News will not forswear its weakness for puns. So now, we offer a sop.

From Thursday, Oct. 15 through Sunday, Oct. 25, inclusive, D Magazine will donate $25 to The Stew Pot on Young Street-the News’ favorite charity-for every day that the paper does not commit a foui pun in its headlines or captions. To the News, we say accept this challenge! Desist in these acts of abuse, and you will earn both your readers’ gratitude and their blessings! Persist, and you risk their wrath.

It is an arresting sight, a screaming orange box set off in electric lemon detail near the Crowley Courts Building, an oasis beckoning luridly to those who would avoid a forced stay at the Lew Sterrett Justice Center, also close at hand.

Lucky Bail Bonds owner George Palmer says he spent about SI,500 last year, and applied about 19 gallons of paint, to make lus once-nondescript relief station for the legally challenged virtually impossible to overlook.

Customer comments have been equally vivid. “It’s either, ’We can’t stand it,’ or ’We love it,”’ says Palmer, who reports the best news is to be found at his bottom line, which has increased by 3d percent since Lucky Bail Bonds’ redo.

Ominously for the rest of us, Palmer also reports inquiries from other industrial-district businessmen, who are considering going neon themselves.

MONEY SHOULD BE FUN

Dallas importer Frank Dickens is a connoisseur of fine sound, an aesthete of the inner ear who is about to indulge his lifelong passion for recorded music by assembling a 5250,000 entertainment center in his new Addison home.

From $20,000 worth of cabling and connectors to a state-of-the-art movie projector to speakers that retail for $70,000 a pair, Dickens is installing nothing but premier technology.

“High end stereos are like that ’57 Chevy you always wanted,” Dickens explains of his audio-philia. “I like the music and electronics both. I can walk in and bave a surreal experience.”

Dickens plans to make his new place rock with B.B. King-his favorite performer-as well as Stevie Ray Vaughan.TravisTritt, and Nat King Cole.

What will be his format of choice?

Much of the time, plain old vinyl.

“The LP is more musical, more right,” he says. “It’s not just a sound, but a feeling. CDs are spectacular, bot different.”

Her Eye on the Prize

One woman’s bumpy road to success.

It is Dr. Leona “Tiny” Hawkins’ particular distinction to be the first African-American of either sex to own and operate a nursing home in Texas-the South Dallas Nursing Home. But her remarkable life story is an even better reason for reading Strong Family Ties, Hawkins’ oral history as taken down and shaped by Ruthe and Debbie Winegarten.

The ninth of 12 children in the family of Willie and Frank Mathis, a Kemp, Tex., preacher, blacksmith, and butcher, Tiny grew up determined to escape from the drudgery of the cotton patch.

“I can remember I hated it so bad,” she says. “The sun would bear down on you so. Picking and chopping cotton wasn’t my bag.”

She tells the Winegartens of her hardscrab-ble early days working as a domestic in Dallas, lean times when she subsidized her low pay by developing a sideline in card reading. The future doctor of business administration also once threatened an abusive white female employer that she would “cut Mississippi on your ass and dot every ’i’.”

Hawkins was equally combative as a businesswoman. As she recounts of one reticent lender, “I told the bank, ’You need to let me have the money in this community just about as bad as I need it. So, if you don’t let me have It, you may see 12 beds on one corner and 12 wheelchairs on one corner and six beds on the other corner. And I’ll call Channel 4,5, and 8 and tell them to come out and see how the other half live.’”

Hawkins got her money.